


Its Not What It Looks Like

by therogueheart



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: A series of unfortunate circumstances, Crack, Crack Treated Somewhat Seriously, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Family Feels, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Humor, M/M, No Smut, Oblivious Evan Buckley, Screen Reader Compatible, Screen Reader Friendly, Sex Jokes, Sexual Humor, The Firefam, Unfortunate Circumstances, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, boys loving boys, brief nudity, firefam - Freeform, idiots to lovers, non-sexual nudity, oblivious eddie diaz, off-screen romance, soft boys in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28700922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therogueheart/pseuds/therogueheart
Summary: They aren't dating, but a series of unfortunate events keeps attempting to prove otherwise.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 458





	Its Not What It Looks Like

**Author's Note:**

> This is by far the single dumbest thing I've ever written. Regardless, I hope you enjoy.

A hot shower could be like Heaven’s rapture for a firefighter. Especially after a long shift or a hard call, when they came back grimy and bloody, everything drying on their skin to form a gritty paste that made his spine crawl. 

Eddie could ordinarily stand being dirty and sweaty - the desert wasn’t exactly the Ritz to begin with, but today was just one of those days where stepping under the hot spray felt like winning the lottery.

It was only when he was already under the spray that he realised he’d forgotten his shampoo, letting his head drop with a growl for a moment. He turned off the water and slipped out of the stall, head down to poke at a raw abrasion on his ribs as he headed for the cubbies.

A set of lanky, naked legs slipping into his vision was all the warning he received before he thumped into something warm and solid. The thing - person - he’d hit was far sturdier than he was and he pitched backwards, shooting a hand out for balance. The smooth tile of the stall next to him offered no purchase. 

Not that it mattered, in any case. Whoever he’d knocked into had been equally knocked off balance and had further doomed himself in lunging to keep Eddie upright, both of them careening backwards on the wet floor until gravity and their combined weight became an unstoppable force. 

He barely managed to curl forwards, saving himself a concussion but earning a set of aching shoulders for the next few days when he hit the floor backwards hard enough to rattle his teeth. 

The person he’d crunched into sprawled over him with a groan and it said something that Eddie recognised Buck immediately just from the sound of his pain. 

“The Hell, man?” He groaned, shoving himself up onto his elbows when he was acutely reminded of the fact that both he and Buck were naked, his soft cock pressed against Buck’s stomach where the younger man had toppled over him like the world’s heaviest weighted blanket. 

Buck’s head lifted with a wince, fresh blood welling up at the right corner of his mouth. Eddie was about to ask if he was okay when Chimney’s voice startled them both. 

“Hey, Buck, bef-- _Oh-hhh._ You guys are…” Chimney jerked backwards and blinked between them, mouth open and a hand raising before he dropped it. “At work, _really?_ And not even in a closet or something?” 

“What are you talking about?” Eddie grumbled, shoving Buck off so he could sit partially upright, arranging himself to cover as much as he could. Chimney was already on his heel and leaving, sparing no regard for answering Eddie.

He let out a long sigh, rubbing at his shoulder before he twisted to look at where Buck was peeling himself off the tiles, one hand lifting to his mouth but stopping an inch from the wound there, probably aware of the bacteria count where he’d just put his hands down.

“What did you do,” Eddie huffed, pushing himself to his feet and using a grip on Buck’s bicep to help him up. 

“B’ih i’h,” Buck slurred back, motioning to his face. He wasn’t wrong, his lower lip was already started to darken and swell, blood slick and still warm where his teeth had punctured the soft flesh. It must’ve happened when his chin had fallen against Eddie’s sternum. 

“Yeah, that’ll suck for a few days,” Eddie sighed, clapping Buck on the shoulder and moving past to retrieve his shampoo, desperate not to be naked and in Buck’s immediate presence for any longer than strictly necessary.

They don’t talk about it afterwards, largely because they don’t get the chance to. Eddie finished washing off before Buck and had barely gotten up the stairs and three mouthfuls into his coffee before the alarm went off. 

He ran for the locker rooms and then for the truck, settling in his seat and only noticing Hen's bright gaze and wicked smirk when they were halfway to the call. 

_"What,"_ he asked her flatly, automatically on the defensive. She merely shrugged, but the expression didn't fade. 

"Nothing. I'm just...Happy for you. And I've got your back". Across from her, Chimney looked between them with a stifled snicker, and Eddie pulled what Buck would call his 'your dog shit on my lawn' face. 

"I'd hope so," he answered wryly, arching a brow at Buck, who seemed as oblivious as him towards whatever inside joke or conversation was transpiring. 

As they hopped out of the truck Bobby moved to walk past then stopped, peering at Buck momentarily. "That looks sore, Buck," the Captain observed with a secretive quirk to his mouth before he moved onwards.

The call took them over the last hour of their shift, and Eddie was more than ready for something to eat and his bed by the time they got back. 

He slipped out to call Abuela and by the time he got back Buck was the only one left, hopping about on one foot, desperately trying to fix the laces on his boot. Eddie rolled his eyes and left him to it, shrugging into a hoodie and sweatpants making idle chatter about the possibility of a pizza night on the weekend. 

They were both too tired for anything tonight, and neither of them brought up the shower incident as they turned sleepily for the doorway, almost running smack into Bobby, who looked at them both with an infuriatingly wise expression before inclining his head. 

“Time for a quick chat, Eddie? You too, Buck,”. Eddie frowned at the request and turned to glance at Buck, who blinked dopily between them with a short nod. Bobby stepped past them and took a seat in the empty locker room. Eddie followed suit, automatically shifting to accommodate when Buck all but flopped against his shoulder.

“Despite my age, I’m not blind,” Bobby began, ignoring the quizzical looks they both shot his way. “And Chimney has the biggest mouth out of all of us, so you got caught by the worst possible person if you were hoping to keep this low-key”. Eddie opened his mouth but the Captain held up a hand, silencing him. 

“Now. The Department generally discourages fraternisation between firefighters - especially of the same house-”

“Frater-what?”

Eddie let out a long breath, turning his head to meet Buck’s owlish, confused stare. He looked adorably dorky, eyes round and clueless, swollen bottom lip giving him a pout. The older fireman pushed the thoughts away, letting a frown take over. 

“He thinks we’re fucking because Chimney saw us fall in the showers”. Or, well. Chimney saw the aftermath of the fall, which was to say he’d seen two naked men plastered together on the floor, neither exactly rushing to get away from the other. 

Bobby looked a little chagrined at his bluntness but made a generally agreeable motion with his hands, to which Buck sat bolt upright, his astounded expression only accentuated by his rumpled look. “Whoah! Hey, Buck 2.0 doesn’t do that anymore, Bobby. You _know_ that. It's one of my top five rules. No fucking in the firehouse”.

Now the Captain looked outright pained, which Eddie disregarded in favour of turning his attention to his best friend. “What are the other four?” He asked curiously, deliberately ignoring the fact that Buck was only offended at being accused of defiling the firehouse, not sleeping with Eddie.

Buck opened his mouth but was cut off by Bobby, who stifled the discussion before it could veer so far off track it ended up in another country. “Alright, hang on. Now Chimney told Hen he saw you two in...In a state of undress together on the floor of the showers-”

“Respectfully, Cap,” Eddie cut in, “Chimney didn’t see what he thought he did. I went straight to the showers, forgot my shampoo and bumped into Buck on the way to the cubbies. The tiles were wet and he took himself down trying to hold me upright. It was awkward as Hell and my bare ass was on those tiles far longer than it should’ve been, but that was it”.

Bobby didn’t look fully convinced, but the Captain regarded Eddie as one of the more mature members of the house, and after a moment he nodded. “If you say nothing happened, then I believe you. And I’ll look into getting rubber mats put down in the showers”. 

“Did you know the rubber mats hold 60% more bacteria and are harder to-” Buck’s voice cut off when Eddie elbowed him in the ribs, and after a rather awkward dismissal they fled to their individual trucks. 

The next day Chimney smirked at them over his jar of peanut butter and said “slipped and fell, huh?” And Buck resolutely did not help the situation by pointing out that _technically, there had been no intentional dick touching._

Sure. What was a little naked scuffling amongst friends, huh?

Thankfully after that the teasing died down to the odd passing remark or smirk over the next handful of days, one week gliding into the next with Eddie resolutely refusing to acknowledge that everyone had suspected him and Buck of dating/fucking, and Buck blitzing from one topic to the next in his usual peppy fashion, unhindered and unbothered by the assumptions and accusations.

Great. It was _great._

Until the second week came and went and on its tail, Eddie ended up with a splotched bruise on his collarbone from a piece of roof tile. It was tender and rapidly turned green-purple, but he was content to disregard it until he was doing pull-ups in the gym at the start of a shift and Hen did a double-take as she passed, before pointing at him. 

“Okay. Now _that_ is incriminating,” she announced, folding her arms and casting him her patented stare of judgement. He dropped from the bar, frowning at her. 

“What is?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, handsome,” she accused, tapping at her own collar. “We all know Buck’s a biter”. 

Eddie startled, his mind flashing up an error 404 sign as he scrambled to try and compute the two main aspects of this interaction. Foremost; that Hen had spotted what he now remembered to be the unfortunately placed bruise (and had ergo assumed it was a hickey) and last but not least, that one of Buck’s sexual traits was apparently to ravish his partners (tailed by the not-so-small point that Hen and everyone else apparently knew this prior).

“It's not a hickey,” he huffed at her, dragging his towel over his face and pressing absently at the bruise. He wrenched his hand away when he caught her staring at him with a smirk, and pointed at her. _“Not_ a hickey!”

“Whatever you say, Romeo. But I can recommend a good concealer if you two wanna keep pretending nothing is going on”.

He scowled at her and slipped past her, halfway across the main floor of the firehouse when he almost crashed into Bobby, who stabilized him with a hand on his shoulder, mouth open on a joking remark that died the moment his gaze dropped to Eddie’s collarbones.

 _“It's not a hickey!”_ Eddie shouted, a touch hysterically. And a touch too loudly, if the way that half the station turned to look at him was anything to go by. Cheeks heating up, Eddie turned away and all but scampered into the showers for a place to hide. Nobody in the station bar Buck would try cornering him naked. 

Word about the bruise got around quick, though, and as they were changing at the end of the day to leave Buck leaned over and poked at his bruise, eliciting a hiss from the older man. 

“Oh, yeah, that’s a doozy,” Buck grinned, leaning away to wrestle with his hoodie. “Whoever gave you that must’a had a mouth like a Dyson”.

“Mouth like a runaway train, more like,” Chim noted gleefully from besides him, exchanging a high-five with Firefighter Castillo. The worst of it all was that Buck just looked confused, brows lifted and lips pursed in semi-amusement. Even after Bobby’s accusation, the fucker still had no genuine clue. 

And like the universe was using him as its personal viewing entertainment, it wasn’t all that long before the third nail in the proverbial coffin came around. They were in the garden drinking beers after putting Christopher to bed one night when Buck went to sit on the grass and yelped, shuffling sideways to paw at his asscheek with a grimace. 

Eddie arched a brow as Buck pouted about sitting on something, but when they both looked through the grass neither could find anything. 

“Maybe your ass pushed whatever it was into the dirt?” Eddie suggested, shrugging. It was probably a rock or something - he wasn’t overly concerned. Buck certainly had enough padding back there that whatever it was hadn’t done all that much damage. 

No, the damage came the day _after,_ when Buck went to sit at the table in the station for lunch and hissed, squirming uncomfortably. 

Hen looked between them, her lips slowly curving up into another vicious smirk. Even Bobby was looking astutely neutral, though his eyes betrayed what his face refused to give away. Eddie's fingers curled tightly around his bottle of mineral water and he opened his mouth, but Hen had already beat him to the punch.

“Trouble sitting there, Buckeroo?” Hen asked as she speared a spring roll with her fork, brows lifting. And Buck - sweet, oblivious Buck - pouted at her with a nod. 

“Uh huh. I was with Eddie last night, and I sat on something real hard, and now I’m sore and it hurts to sit down”. 

Sweet fucking Christ.

Chimney inhaled the noodles he had in his mouth and Hen dropped her fork with a clatter and at the end of the table Bobby uttered what was possibly the unholiest curse Eddie had ever heard from him, head dropping into his hands. 

“What? What is it?” Buck asked, frowning as he looked between them all. Eddie said a quick prayer and set down the lettuce wrap he’d been intent on devouring, clearing his throat loudly. 

“A rock,” he clarified at volume, staring around at them all. “I would like to make it clear we were in the garden, and he sat on a _rock”._

“Oh, I’m sure what he sat on was _hard as a rock,”_ Hen howled from her seat, and Buck’s frown deepened before the realisation sprang up on him, brows merging with his hairline as he shoved to his feet and pointed at them. 

“You all think I sat on _Eddie!”_

Hen was laughing so hard she was all but on her knees, tears streaming down her face. Bobby had taken to slapping Chim on the back, no doubt hoping to stop at least one of his team from asphyxiation. Eddie let out a dying sound, kicking at Buck’s ankles under the table and motioning for him to sit. 

It was surprisingly Bobby who spoke next. 

“We are going to sit down and we are going to talk about _anything_ except Buck and Eddie and what may or may not be going on. Whatever is going on outside of our knowledge is none of our business right now”.

The others tried to argue and even Buck looked a little like he’d actually rather talk about it, but Eddie couldn’t be more thankful for the Captain’s interference and the firmness of his voice. Bobby could argue a military colonel into agreement, and it wasn’t long before the team reluctantly settled into discussing the shift. 

It didn’t stop the glances and the tension, though. The elephant in the room that would mow them down the moment Bobby’s authority was no longer presiding. Chim slipped in sly remarks here and there and Hen’s eyes betrayed every question she longed to ask and even Bobby stared at them, at Eddie’s deliberate silence and Buck’s pink-cheeked attempt at normalcy. 

Eddie, like a coward, fled the moment he was able. 

Buck, stubborn and sweet and a dog with a bone when it came to those he cared about, followed. 

The next morning Chim took one look at the bruises that littered their bodies from necks to hips as they dressed in the locker rooms and whistled lowly. “What’s the story for those, then? You both fell down the same set of steps? Got caught in hailstones conveniently the size of someone’s mouth?”

Eddie and Buck smirked at the time and Eddie let Buck’s hand land lightly on the back of his shoulder, where his fingers lined up with the pink scrapes that dragged jaggedly downwards. Even with his back half to Chim, he could hear the startled sound the older firefighter made as he leaned over and pressed a kiss to one of the dark marks mottling the base of Buck’s neck. 

“You and Maddie have a baby on the way, Chim. Shouldn’t you know how we got these?” He asked, brow cocked.

Bobby, just walking past the lockers, almost walked straight into the truck.


End file.
